Chapter 4 - Beneath the Third Floorboard
I didn’t sleep.
At six the next morning, I stood outside the apartment building where I had grown up in Queens.
The neighborhood had changed.
The laundromat downstairs was now a coffee shop.
The faded grocery store had become an expensive organic market.
But the brick building looked exactly the same.
Alexander stood beside me in a dark overcoat.
“I told you I could do this alone.”
“And I told you someone threatened you.”
“You always ignore people?”
“Usually.”
“I noticed.”
He looked uncomfortable.
Good.
The building superintendent remembered my father.
After twenty minutes of explanation and one awkward phone call to the current tenant, we were allowed inside.
The apartment felt impossibly small.
A young teacher named Maya lived there now.
She listened quietly while I explained that my mother might have hidden something beneath the floor.
“You can check,” she said.
The old bedroom had been converted into an office.
The trunk was gone.
But the floorboards remained.
One.
Two.
Three.
I knelt.
The third board near the wall had a faint notch along its edge.
Alexander found a screwdriver.
My hands shook as we lifted it.
Underneath was darkness.
Then my fingers touched metal.
I pulled out a small tin box wrapped in plastic.
For a moment, nobody spoke.
I opened it.
Inside were photographs, bank statements, a flash drive, and a cassette tape.
Alexander picked up one document.
His face drained of color.
At the top was the Blake Foundation logo.
Below it were transfers totaling more than eleven million dollars.
“This can’t be real.”
I grabbed another page.
Employee pension accounts.
Hundreds of names.
Retirement savings transferred into companies I had never heard of.
Then I saw a familiar surname.
Sterling.
I looked at Alexander.
“Vanessa Sterling?”
He took the paper.
One of the shell companies was registered to Vanessa’s father.
Charles Sterling.
A billionaire investor who had been Richard Blake’s closest business partner.
Alexander stared at the paperwork.
“My father and Charles built half their empire together.”
Maya quietly backed toward the door.
“I think you two need privacy.”
After she left, Alexander sat on the floor.
For the first time, he looked less like a billionaire and more like a son discovering that his childhood had been constructed from lies.
“There’s a tape,” I said.
The apartment had no cassette player.
But Maya found one in a storage closet downstairs.
The machine clicked.
Static filled the room.
Then my mother’s voice emerged.
My entire body froze.
“If someone is hearing this, something has happened to me.”
I covered my mouth.
Fourteen years disappeared.
Mom.
Her voice.
Alive again.
“I found financial records proving Richard Blake and Charles Sterling diverted pension funds through the Blake Foundation. Richard told me I misunderstood what I saw.”
The tape crackled.
“I did not misunderstand.”
Alexander lowered his head.
My mother continued.
“I copied everything.”
Then her voice changed.
“There is one more thing. Richard is afraid, but Charles Sterling is dangerous.”
Alexander and I looked at each other.
“If anything happens to me, don’t trust Charles.”
A loud sound came from the hallway.
Footsteps.
Then Maya screamed.
Alexander jumped up.
The apartment door burst open.
A masked man rushed inside.
May you like
He wasn’t looking at us.
He was looking directly at the metal box.
